Hollywood Community Gathers to Expose Human Rights Abuses and Send a Message of Hope to the Women and Girls of Afghanistan

On March 29, 1999, the Hollywood community, and women's rights and human rights leaders will converge to shine a bright light on the human rights abuses against the women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime. The program is being written, directed, and produced by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason.

In Afghanistan today 11 1/2 million women and girls are prisoners in their own homes under a system of "gender apartheid" brutally imposed by the Taliban regime. Women are not allowed to work. Girls and women are not allowed to attend school. Women cannot leave their homes unless escorted by a close male relative and shrouded in the head-to-toe burqa, with only a narrow mesh opening through which to see. Neither cultural nor religious in origin, these repressive laws are the Taliban's own invention. Just two years ago -- before the Taliban seized power - Afghan women worked, were educated, wore contemporary clothing and moved about freely in their daily lives.